In response to Trump’s Muslim ban, Google tells employees to get back to U.S. immediately

‘It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues.’

When President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday banning refugees and Muslim citizens from seven different countries from entering the U.S., it immediately meant that some legal residents could not reenter the country from abroad.

That led Google CEO Sundar Pichai to issue a memo to his employees to get back to the U.S. immediately if they’re out of the country. Pichai said more than 100 Google employees could be affected by Trump’s edict.

“It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” Pichai wrote in the memo, obtained by Bloomberg. “We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so.”

Trump’s order prohibits citizens from seven Muslim nations (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) from entering the country for the next 90 days.

Google joins Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in expressing concern about the latest executive order. According to Bloomberg, some Google employees were out of the country—either on work assignments or on vacation—at the time of Trump’s signing and were trying to get back as soon as they could. Even if those employees have visas, Google is concerned that if they’re from one of those seven countries, they may be denied entry back to the U.S.

“We’re concerned about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that create barriers to bringing great talent to the U.S.,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We’ll continue to make our views on these issues known to leaders in Washington and elsewhere.”

According to ProPublica, the order could block as many as 500,000 legal U.S. residents from returning to the country.

Customs and Border Control immediately began implementing the measure Friday night, leading to chaos in some airports.

Josh Katzowitz is a staff writer at the Daily Dot specializing in YouTube and boxing. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. A longtime sports writer, he's covered the NFL for CBSSports.com and boxing for Forbes. His work has been noted twice in the Best American Sports Writing book series.